How do you make love believable? We believe Catherine loves Heathcliff, Romeo loves Juliet, Rhett loves Scarlett, and The Doctor loves Rose. I believe it anyway. A character can't just say it no more than your partner can and that be enough. They've got to show it. Ah, the old show, don't tell. But …
Continue reading a thousand things better to do than read a book
Maybe you've heard that NPR has this nifty new series--In Character. You get to write a short essay about why a certain American character in fiction is important to you--and why that character should be important to the rest of us. If they like your piece, they'll post your essay on the site, and if …
Just random curiosity...if you were looking for a madcap romance, which fictional character would you want to sweep you up and away? And would you choose a different character if you wanted to get married?
You can't use your novel for revenge. Oh, it's a fun idea, but it doesn't work. Sometimes I get this foolish idea to use a person from my real life in my novel, and if that person, you know, did me wrong, I think, "Aha! I shall make him evil or ugly or kill him …
One day we shall all learn to follow our own advice. What do you think? My advice is to write without fear, write your passion, and write without caring what your family and friends think. Got that? Now, why can't I do that? My dad's second wife had a daughter. This girl, barely a year …
All good novelists have bad memories. --Robert Olen Butler paraphrasing Graham Greene (so you go on and paraphrase this somewhere else and it'll be a game of telephone--who knows how the quote will end up many clicks away in cyberspace!) This idea appears in many places--the notion that great artists are miserable or were miserable …
Continue reading Wanted: One Crazy, Abused, Suicidal, Drunk, Promiscuous Writer
Oh, the things you see when you show up.
January begs for resolutions and lists and makeovers and promises. She stands at our door or over desk and taps her foot, waiting for the insight and reflection, and I suspect the older we get the more she rolls her eyes and sighs at all our big announcements and revelations. Perhaps she keeps coming round …
Continue reading January is shaking her head and rolling her eyes at you. You know she is.
For the end of the year let's forget the writer angst-what's the point of angst anyway? Let's think about telling a story. Don't you love a good story? Whether in a book or on a screen, we all seem to want another story. We never tire of them. We watch them on television, we watch …
When my husband went to my blog earlier this evening, ads were posted there. Since I don't put ads on my blog, this rather surprised me. I went back to look for myself and they were gone, but now I just to say that if you should happen to see ads here, they aren't mine, …
Marta Bacon 